


flowers may flourish still

by bryar6



Category: Howl no Ugoku Shiro | Howl's Moving Castle, Howl's Moving Castle (movie)
Genre: Calcifer is a saucy boy, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Missing Scene, One Shot, Sophie and Howl are soff your honor, Talk of War, briefly mentioned wound/bandaging, movieverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:42:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29636901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bryar6/pseuds/bryar6
Summary: Howl returns home late one night from the battlefield to find Sophie still very much awake. Some cathartic and comforting talk ensues for the both of them. Or, a little more insight to the internal battles Howl is fighting.Takes place sometime after the portal to the hat shop is added, but before the air raid(so slightly outside the shown movie timeline, sue me, I wanted a scene here).
Relationships: Sophie Hatter & Howl Pendragon, Sophie Hatter/Howl Pendragon
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	flowers may flourish still

**Author's Note:**

> Just kind of toeing the waters here, I have watched the movie three times over the past couple days and should be able to read the books soon too (so excited for that) but my hands and fic ideas got ahead of me so here's the product. Hopefully with the book read (I do know it's quite different but from what I hear and have seen in snippets I'll love it) there'll be more fic inspiration...Anyways, hope y'all enjoy and have a wonderful day. 
> 
> Title is a line from David Daiches _War Poem for Britain_ (I do recommend giving that a reading).

“Howl’s home,” Calcifer pipes up from his nest of logs in the fireplace. His flames lean a bit, the only indication he’s paying much attention to the castle at all. The grand building creaks and hums, a slight hiss of steam as the internal mechanisms settle into someplace. 

Sure enough, Sophie looks up from the utensils in her hands she’d been attempting to polish and the door clicks. The color indicator turns of its own accord and lands on solid black, swinging open to reveal a dripping, messy slump of dark feathers that drags itself up the steps. Sophie’s first thought is _what a magnificent mess he’s making of the floor_ and secondly, _he’s hurt, isn’t he?_

He’s impossibly silent by his own standards, standing at the fireplace holding partly clawed hands extended in front of him with arms that tremble ever so slightly. If it bothers him any, it doesn’t show, stoic as ever. Well, no. Stoic as he decides to be, on occasion. 

“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” he mumbles, leaning against the edge of the table, bumping aside a few stacks of cleaned dinnerware. He avoids her gaze, eyes fixed on the steady glow instead. “It’s late. Early. Whichever.” 

“How do you think I’m supposed to sleep when you’re out there risking your neck, Howl?” 

“S’easy, everyone else does it. Put your head down on the pillow and close your eyes…” His chin tips towards his chest and she notes the soot on his face as the feathers ever so slowly begin to recede, his hair returning and sticking flat to his face. Wherever he’d been, it’d been raining. _Do the ships really still fight in weather so awful?_ She has the answer right in front of her face, of course. 

“Do you ever come back _not_ looking like a disaster in bird-human form?” Calcifer snarks, wood popping as he burns a little hotter. Howl huffs but does and says nothing in response. 

“Now that’s enough,” Sophie scolds, waving him off and turning back to the increasingly slumped wizard. “Are you alright?” 

He nods but his hidden grimace says otherwise as it pulls at the corners of his mouth. “Just...need a bath.” He points his chin up the stairs, eyes still shut tightly as though willing himself not to see the mess that he is. 

“Then go do that, please. You’ll feel better, won’t you?” she encourages, lifting herself off the sofa and crossing her arms. “Did you even eat anything today?”

“Such fuss,” he sighs, eyes glimmering with a flicker of amusement, but slips forward, gathering his long legs underneath him and rising with the smallest of pained grunts. 

Sophie bites her lip, ever so tempted to reach out and offer assistance, but she presumes she’d be rebuked quite quickly. He staggers up the stairs, pointedly keeping his eyes on the rail. She remains seated, listening as the rush of water fills the pipes, the little fire demon shifting and readjusting with the presumed effort it takes. She returns to viciously scrubbing the silver as she waits, a hundred thoughts crossing her mind. 

_Where does he go, into those dark depths? Over what once beautiful towns does death and destruction now wage, and how long until it makes its way here, to this place that he’s so kindly gifted us? Are we even safe here? What if they come when he’s gone? Calcifer and I would be enough, right? Does Markl know any protective magic? What am I saying, he’s just a child!_ The worries are almost too much for her to bear and they overpower her sense of time. 

“Foxgloves in the bathroom, hm?” comes his soft voice from behind her, startling her mildly. 

“Oh,” she squeaks out, a fork tumbling from her grasp and clattering on the floor. Calcifer grumbles something about disturbing his rest. “Well I thought they were very nice…”

He laughs quietly as he sweeps behind her, leaning up against the back of the sofa, his height making her feel so small in comparison. 

“They are lovely. The foxglove means a great many things,” he muses, dropping off after a short pause, his face falling far quicker than she’s expecting. He removes his hands from behind his back, extending something to her without meeting her eyes. She frowns. 

“It just so happens I can’t seem to reach this one spot,” he says, completely nonplussed as he throws himself down onto the cushion beside her. The seat creaks slightly under him as he makes himself comfortable. Ruining his spine with that terrible posture, if you asked her. “If you’d care to do the honors of bandaging it, so it might heal naturally?”

“You can’t just use magic on it? You’re sure you want me to do this?” she asks, hesitantly taking the bandages in her hands. 

He presses his thumb and index together, a small flash of pinkish glow coming from between the place his skin contacts. “Can’t touch it, can’t heal it,” he explains simply. “And I have a reason for everything, do I not? I asked you. I could wake Markl.” 

She allows herself a small eye roll, but gestures for him to show her. He slips the robe from his shoulder so the cloth pools at his elbow, exposing a sizable gash over one shoulderblade. It’s reddened and angry, but already seems fast on the path of healing as he often seemed to be after these outings. _Will just need a gentle poultice and a light wrap by the looks._ At the very least, being the eldest had its perks; she’d spent much time tending to young one’s injuries and Howl was luckily much the same though clearly something far nastier had caused it. 

“Oh, Howl, you stupid thing,” she hisses, carefully unwinding the cloth in her hands and lifting the jar of herbs. It’s such a messy line that stings her just to look at. “How do you do this to yourself?” 

“It wasn’t me,” he protests, giving her a slightly hurt glance over his shoulder and a dramatic sigh. “Sulliman’s henchmen, the fight. Alas. No rest for the wicked.” 

“Oh, you’re wicked alright. Disappearing off into the night without a word, leaving us all in the dark stuck with this irate demon and the very witch who cursed me.” This is interjected with a fitting _hmph_ from said fire demon, though he grumbles away quietly. “Where do you go?” she nags, though when his brow sinks with weight heavier than this conversation, she realizes she’s touched on something sensitive. 

“Do you really want that answer?” His voice is gravelly and cracks almost unnoticeably. “Don’t you know already?” 

“Yes, I know. I suppose...a better question would be…” She stumbles over her words, willing herself not to unintentionally voice things with the sure potential to set him off again. This war makes him miserable enough. But she wants to know, to be of any comfort to him. “What’s— what’s it like out there?” 

There’s a long, delayed silence before he answers, the slow creaking of the castle and the gentle crackle of fire the only sounds filling the quiet. 

“You mean the battlefield?” 

“Well...yes. You needn’t talk if you’d rather not.” 

He sucks in an uneasy breath, whether from the sensation of the cold paste she’s rubbed into his skin or the thoughts she’s asking him to bring to light, she can’t tell. Instead she dutifully wraps his shoulder, under his arm and around, layering the cloth thickly. He shifts back a little as she secures the knot, as though steadying himself again, chewing at his lip. 

“Loud,” he says finally, eyes landing unfocused on the shifting colors of Calcifer’s flame. Sophie looks up, drawing her hands away from the wound as he shivers. “Unsettlingly loud. And blinding. The explosions, the fire. It’s so bright even in the dark and the damage. It’s so ugly. Everything is burned and blackened, the ruins of homes and fields just like...” She notes how the trembles in his arms have returned with a cringe. 

“Oh, Howl, you don’t…” she whispers, reaching out and clasping one of his hands. His fingers tighten over her much smaller hand. Her words catch in her throat. 

“So many witches and wizards, Sophie. They don’t know what they’re doing, or why. They’re just striking out, they don’t care what they’re hitting so long as it’s the enemy. They just want destruction and bloodshed. I’m afraid some of them truly are stuck, they’ll never be the same, heartless creatures.” 

He shudders and lifts the robe, snapping it about his shoulders and stares at the floor through his hair, looking like a pale reflection of his more energetic and lively self. 

“Heartless things just like me,” he whispers, almost so quiet she can’t hear him underneath the room’s sounds. His grip on her hand becomes vice-like, his skin so chilled despite the heat right in front of them.

“Oh, hush with that,” she insists, placing her other hand over his. “You are not heartless by any means. Being tied to Calcifer means nothing less of you.” 

“What happens then, Sophie? What happens when I’m mindless just like that? When I’m nothing more than a feathery beast.” The shadows in the room creep higher and she resists a flinch of fear, remembering that first terrible incident with the spirits slinking away from his folded form and her nightmare of him curled on himself, snarling in the shape of a monster quite like nothing she’d seen before. 

“It won’t happen. We’ll make sure of it. You have Calcifer and Markl and— and you have me, too. I’m not going anywhere. None of us are.” There’s a newfound strength, confidence, in her voice she feels so unfamiliar with, but it’s there and she can only hope it’ll sate his hungry fears. 

“Are you sure you want to stay? I would never trap you here with someone so horrid as me,” he mumbles, glassy eyes searching her face. She smiles lightly and shakes her head, her heart aching just to think he fears they might even remotely believe these things about him. 

“I chose to come here, didn’t I? Maybe I don’t have the same reasons for everything that you do but something brought me here and I think it’s where I was meant to be. You’re quite the opposite of horrid, too, you know. They don’t call you the great wizard for nothing.”

“You don’t deserve this, Sophie,” he presses, moving as though he’d draw away. She notices and leans closer, pressing her shoulder to his uninjured one and tipping her head against him. He goes still except for the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, reminding her of a petrified animal. 

“And nor do you, Howl.” 

“So what then?” 

“We keep going, we break your and Calcifer’s curse, and mine, and Turnip-head too, we end the war so there’s no more awful fighting. One day this will all be over. That’s a good plan, isn’t it?” 

“I don’t deserve _you_ ,” he says hoarsely, but one arm slips around her and he tucks her head under his chin, resting a cheek against her hair. 

“Shush,” she laughs lightly, unable to disguise her relief. She throws her arms around him and buries her face against his chest, silently wishing it were possible to never need to let him go. 

“Thank you.” 

“Oh, don’t. You really should go rest, now.” 

He peers down at her as she pulls back, his eyes showing a sliver of anxiety and pain. “Why can’t I just stay here?” 

She tips her head. “I suppose you don’t need to leave...If you want my company, that is.” 

“I always want your company, Sophie.” He draws her into a bit of a sudden hug, gentle and warm and telling and all she can do is respond in kind, noticing how much brighter everything about him seems, her happier Howl now returned. 

“Don’t go leaving us, I mean it.” _I couldn’t stand to be without you_.

“I wouldn’t dare, sweetheart,” he hums, a small sigh of relief escaping him. She squeezes him a little harder in return, settling against him as her eyes droop and she slowly nods off to the rhythmic shifting of the castle, a gentle wane to Calcifer’s flame resembling what she imagines Howl’s heart would sound like if it were softly beating away underneath her ear. 

Perhaps one day, it will.


End file.
